Outlander Has Finally Cast Its Brianna

Ever since it was confirmed that Outlander’s second season would follow the plot of the second book in Diana Gabaldon’s series, all fans have cared about is who would be playing Brianna. We finally have our answer in Sophie Skelton, a relative newcomer with credits in Doctors and Foyle’s War.

Spoilers follow.

The reason the casting of Brianna is such a big deal is because she’s Claire and Jamie’s daughter. Except she doesn’t know that for most of her life, since Claire goes back to the 40s and raises her with Frank Randall. Brianna, as a result of that and an eventual marriage, has a lot of names—“Brianna Ellen Randall Fraser MacKenzie.”

In the teaser trailers for season 2, we’ve seen a lot of Jamie and Claire trying to change history while also dealing with the lavish excesses of the French society. What we haven’t seen, for obvious reasons, is anything like the framing device of the book Dragonfly in Amber that the second season is based on. And since the book has Claire telling her adult daughter about all of her time travel adventures—and also shows that she eventually leaves Jamie and goes back to her real time—that’s a pretty big spoiler for anyone who only watches the show but hasn’t yet read the books.

Since the first season of Outlander ended with Jamie and a pregnant Claire heading to France, it’s still a mystery how the adult Brianna, played by Skelton, will show up there.

[Variety]

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